Rob Ford: The accidental progressive

Ten thousand years from now, when archeologists and historians use lonely robots to dig through the big pile of Tim Horton's coffee cups and paper TTC transfers that cover over the remnants of the old City of Toronto, they may conclude something surprising about the bygone political era of Mayor Rob Ford.

And then there's Toronto's new chief city planner, hired just this week. By all accounts, Jennifer Keesmaat takes a decidedly non-Fordian approach to city building. She's derided the removal of the Jarvis bike lanes as a “waste” and expressed support for TTC Chair Karen Stintz's successful bid to lock Ford out of the transit file. And she's taken the radical approach that walking, and not driving around in an oversized luxury car, is the best kind of urban mobility.

In the past, this mayor would have derided some of Keesmaat's views as war-on-car nonsense. But now she's set to draw a salary at Rob Ford's City Hall. Another seemingly progressive win for this administration.

Very little of this was achieved on purpose. Ford has walked backwards into many of these left-wing victories, often doing little more than pouting in the corner as Toronto City Council debates and votes on issues. And while the longer-term legacy view of the Ford years might start to look benignly progressively, it's important not to gloss over the negative impact Ford has had in some areas. With his zeal for austerity, he's forced compromise service reductions and stalled progress in some key areas.

Still, historians of the far-flung future shouldn't be blamed for looking at the political highlights and coming to different conclusions about Rob Ford. Only halfway through his mandate, this mayor has—by mistake—amassed an impressive list of progressive credentials. Owing to his ability to routinely achieve the exact opposite of what he intended, the third mayor of amalgamated Toronto may go down in history as an unlikely left-wing stalwart—an accidental progressive.